The present invention relates to a position determination and adjustment system in which a laser source is rotated while emitting laser beam, so as to produce an inclined plane making a certain inclination angle from a horizontal reference plane, and it also relates to a light sensing device used for the system. The position determination and adjustment system according to the present invention allows for creating a reference point, a reference line, and a reference plane for measurements.
Prior art optical leveling apparatuses have been replaced with rotary laser devices used to produce a horizontal reference level covering a relatively large range.
For recent years, rotary laser devices have become popular in use for determining vertical orientations, especially, for creating lines and planes based upon reference elevations. Such rotary laser devices, while emitting laser beam in horizontal directions, rotates, reciprocally sweeps, and halts to produce reference planes of rotations, partial reference lines, reference planes, reference segments, reference points, and the like.
The rotary laser devices have been used to produce reference horizontal lines for the purpose of localization of window frames in interior constructions for buildings, and to produce reference horizontal planes for making mounts in construction sites and simulating sectional surfaces after cutting the grounds off. The rotary laser devices have also been used to set up reference points in determining inclinations for stairs, and some of those devices can produce reference planes inclined in one way or in two ways.
One of such prior art rotary laser devices capable of producing inclined reference surfaces is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H6-26861, and the configuration and operation of the disclosed rotary laser device will now be summed up.
Referring to FIG. 24, a rotary laser device 951 has a casing 901 and a laser projector 903. The casing 901 has its upper center portion recessed in a shape of a frustum of a cone to define a concave portion 902. The laser projector 903 vertically extends through the center of the concave portion 902. The laser projector 903 supported by the recessed portion 902 can be tilted on and around a spherical mount 904 formed in the middle thereof. A rotary unit 905 provided with a pentaprism 909 is mounted in an upper portion of the laser projector 903. The rotary unit 905 is rotated through a drive gear 907 and sweep gear 908 powered by a sweep motor 906.
Two pairs of units of inclination mechanism (only one of the pairs is illustrated) are attached around the laser projector 903. Either of the units 910 of the inclination mechanism includes a motor 911, a screw 912, and a nut 913 that are all cooperative to make inclination. The screw 912 is rotated through a driving gear 914 and a tilting gear 915 both powered by the motor 911. The laser projector 903 is coupled to the nut 913 by a tilting arm 916 intervening therebetween. Rotations of the screw cause the nut 913 to vertically move, which, in turn, causes the laser projector 903 to tilt.
Two sensors 918 and 919 are located and separately fixed to the laser projector 903 in the middle thereof in a plane orthogonal to a rotation axis of the rotary unit 905. One of the fixed sensors, the sensor 918, is positioned in parallel with the tilting arm 916 while the other, the sensor 919, is oriented orthogonal to the tilting arm 916. A flange 920 having a pivot pin 921 is fixed to a lower end of the laser projector 903. An upper end of the pivot pin 921 pivotally supports an L-shaped tilting plate 922 at one point thereon, and an angle-determining sensor 929 and an angle-determining sensor 930 are incorporated in the L-shaped tilting plate 922. The angle-determining sensor 929 is positioned in the same direction as the fixed sensor 918 while the angle-determining sensor 930 is positioned in the same direction as the fixed sensor 919. The tilting plate 922 is connected to both the pairs of the units of inclining mechanism (only one unit is shown).
Each of the units 925 of inclining mechanism includes a motor 926, a screw 927 rotated by the motor 926, and a nut block 928 through which the tilting screw 927 is screwed down, all of these components being cooperative to make a reference to inclination angle. One end of the tilting plate 922 is fitted on the nut block 928. The motor 926 is actuated to rotate the screw 927 and vertically move the nut block 928, and thus, the tilting plate 922 can be inclined.
A laser beam projector (not shown) and a projector optical system (not shown) including optics such as a collimator lens that refracts incident rays from the laser beam projector into parallel rays are built in the laser projector 903. Laser beam emitted from the projector optical system is deflected in horizontal direction by the pentaprism and radiated out of a projector window 931.
Functional features of the rotary laser device will now be described. Determination of an inclination angle is carried out by the inclining mechanism 925. First, the inclination mechanism 910 is actuated to regulate postures of the fixed sensors 918 and 919 so that both of the sensors are horizontal. The motor 926 is then actuated to rotate the screw 927 and lift the nut block 928, and consequently, the tilting plate 922 is inclined at an angle xcex7 relative to the flange 920 in a reverse angular direction to the desired predetermined angle xcex7. The inclination angle xcex7 is detected by a component such as an encoder (not shown) linked to the motor 926.
Then, the inclination mechanism 910 is actuated to tilt the laser projector 903 so that the tilting plate 922 is detected as being horizontal. At this posture, an emission direction of light from the laser projector 903 inclines at the predetermined angle xcex7 relative to the horizontal plane. After the inclination angle in the emission direction of the laser light is determined, the laser beam deflected at the pentaprism 909 in a direction orthogonal to the rotation axis is radiated through the laser projector 903 while the rotary unit 905 is being rotated or the rotary unit 905 is reciprocally sweeping within a range equivalent to the predetermined angle, so as to produce an inclined reference plane.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H11-94544 discloses a post-construction elevation display apparatus and a post-construction elevation determining apparatus both of which are comprised of a laser device rotating simultaneous with irradiating laser beam and a finished elevation display. The post-construction elevation determining apparatus can determine a desired post-construction elevation by using the post-construction elevation display to receive laser beam irradiated by the laser device so as to detect a distance from the laser device to the display device and a deviation between the display device and a reference horizontal plane against which the laser beam is directed.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H11-118487 discloses a reference irradiated beam detecting apparatus incorporated with an inclination angle sensor, which is used in combination with a laser device.
Additionally, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H7-208990 discloses a 3-dimensional coordinate determining apparatus including an irradiating means rotating and irradiating a plurality of plane beams and more than one reflecting means. The 3D coordinate determining means uses the plurality of reflecting means to reflect light emitted from the irradiating means and uses the irradiated means to receive the reflected beams to determine 3-dimensional coordinates in relation with the reflecting means.
The prior art rotary laser device as in the above statement must have two pairs of units of inclining mechanism which support the laser projector 903 in a manner where the laser projector can have a full freedom of tilting in two ways, in order to produce inclined planes. Such prior art embodiment is disadvantageous in that it needs two of the fixed sensors 918 and 919 and two of the tilting sensors 929 and 930 and in that it requires a complicated configuration, i.e., it needs a control circuit to control an actuation of two of the pairs of the units of inclining mechanism, which results in an increased manufacturing cost. Moreover, the prior art rotary laser device disadvantageously produces only one reference plane but can never produce horizontal and inclined reference planes simultaneously, which disturbs determining a relative relation between the horizontal and inclined reference planes, or which disturbs determining a relative relation between two inclined reference planes different in inclination angle from each other.
The prior art embodiment of the 3-dimensional coordinate determining device as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H7-208990 should be further improved by accurately regulating an angular position of the reflecting means so as to return beams reflected from the reflecting means to the irradiating means. Additionally, the reflecting means must be moved in producing the predetermined reference plane, and a determination value also must be monitored at the irradiation means, which disadvantageously results in requesting more than one operators to dedicate themselves in handling the device.
In order to overcome the aforementioned disadvantage, the present invention provides an improvement of a position determining system by which both a plane of arbitrary inclination and a horizontal reference plane of arbitrary elevation can be simultaneously determined without tilting a laser projector and without precisely locating a light receiving element.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a position determining system of a simplified mechanism that is capable of producing a horizontal reference plane and a plurality of inclined planes simultaneously.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a position determining system of simplified operation which permits a single operator to work sufficiently.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a light receiving and sensing device of a simplified mechanism that is capable producing a horizontal reference plane and an inclined reference plane simultaneously.
The present invention is an improved system consisting of a light receiving and sensing device and a rotary laser device, wherein the rotary laser device includes a body having means for sending data on vertical angles and horizontal angles, and wherein the light receiving and sensing device includes a phantom plane determining function for determining phantom planes, so as to display or output differential vertical angles in relation with the phantom surfaces produced from the data received from the body.
The means for sending data on vertical angles is preferably laser light pivotal and diverging in a shape of a fan, and the means for sending data on horizontal angles is preferably configured with an encoder provided in a rotary element and a data transfer route aided by a communication means that relays the data detected by the encoder to the light receiving and sensing device.
The communication means is preferably an optical communication or a wave communication.
A light receiving section in the light receiving and sensing device may have a versatility of serving as either a vertical detecting element or a light receiving element for optical communication, and the light receiving section may have a condensing means.
Also preferably, the fan-shaped laser light is substantially of 3 or more fan-shaped rays, and the pivotal fan-shaped laser light of the means for sending data on vertical angles is correlated with the data transmitted from the encoder to the light receiving and sensing device for subsequent data transfer.
With the system thus configured, the fan-shaped beams emitted from a rotary laser device are received by the light receiving section in the light receiving and sensing device, and vertical angles of a location where the light receiving and sensing device is placed is computed from delays between points of time when the fan-shaped beams are detected. Moreover, a rotational angular position transfer means provided in the rotary laser device transfers data on rotational angular positions to a receiving element of the light receiving and sensing device, and then, the light receiving and sensing device computes the location of the light receiving and sensing device from the rotational angular positions.